The lake swayed to it's tune. Melanchonic or happy, no one knew, a privilege it amassed itself greatly in and it danced soundly to that. As it swayed back and forth, it deepened the silence of the girl on it's shores. Her hazel eyes focused on the distorted reflection of the moon on the surface of the dancing lake.
Algae and dirt matters followed the lake. When it swayed back, they swayed with it and when it swayed forth, they swayed on it. As they move without a choice of their own, two or more alga collides and on impact, runs in opposite directions.
The girl watches this over and over, until her eyes soft away from the algae and the drifting wood and the entirety of the dirty brown lake. Her mind everywhere and nowhere. Reaching across different lakes and countries. Different memories swarming through but not settling in any of them. Her mind far off but her hands twitched in anticipation of what was coming. And she needn't wait for long. A man was sliding down the slope leading to the lake. His puffy red eyes concentrated on her, his right inked hand possessing a gun, while the other was missing a sizeable chunk. The stump has stopped bleeding for a while now, but was still red and raw. The man's face a boat of emotions: pain, recent trauma, fear and a misplaced determination. He stood just shy of the slope and watched her in aggression.
"Don't just stand there," she said, "come up here."
The finality to her voice made him plodd towards her, until he stood beside her. Her gaze remained on the lake, and he stood, waiting. They remained, like old friends on a reunion to reminisce and enjoy the smell of the lake.
4ink suddenly felt the shame of waiting. He had become one of those wild animals, who after being captured, had been taught submission in the cruelest of ways. Back on the roof, he, a wild animal, had submitted. For before that time, he'd never believed in supreme beings: sun god, wood god, the creation story. All those were fairytales the average person relied on for their hope. There were as pillars were to a building. The building being the man who believed; to keep him afloat and not think of the problems that comes from looking down.
The name 4ink haven't come from believing in those things. It came from his love of pleasing San through violence. It came from his love of pistols and the techniques he applied in using them. The name actually came from how every artist in the city used his body as a drawing board. But to 4ink, that's the opinion of his mockers. Majority or not, it was his opinion that mattered. He is a man of the streets. He belonged to the street, so much as the street belonged to him. Today, this night, the street in him fled. It's heels touching his head. She was only a girl, now he saw her clearly, and not some godlike being. Could such man, pitiful as he, ever go back to San?
He drew his gun to his mouth, using his teeth to turn off the safety switch. Pointed it at her. The girl not acknowledging his presence or the danger he currently posed.
Looking towards the direction of where her gaze–a vast empty lake, he looked back, incredulously. "Look at me," he cried out.
She turned. He corked his pistol to her forehead. Her gaze on his threat nonchalant.
"Put away the gun," the girl waved off, those hazel eyes going back to it's original entertainment.
4ink shook his head as he yelled in refusal. "I don't care if you refuse to face me, but I'll shoot nonetheless."
She signed. "Haven't you yet had enough. I thought you have."
"You are not a thing who could dictate that to me–if I've had enough or not. You are nothing. I am the right hand man to the greatest criminal boss in this city and you are just a girl with daddy issues."
He saw her ambiance dropped and his teeth pulled in a half-grin. With the gun to her head, he came up and stood in her front, only to see her eyes were flat and purple and wild, with no human soul in them.
Those penetrating eyes stared at 4ink and he felt a monster shadow enclasped upon him. His mouth still in a half-grin, haunted. His body trembled. Shakily, he pressed down his trigger finger. The finger stiff to the kick in his muscles. His eyes shot in. He looked at his hand with rising panic and utter confusion. The bones in his neck jutting out like someone holding in a fart in front of his crush, as he tried with every strength, various mind tricks, to get his finger to pull the trigger. Sweats tricked down his face splattering into the shore. And when he realized that he was doing the impossible, he stared at her, another wave of tears approaching.
"What have you done to me?"
Her eyes urging death gazed at his pitiful form. He was taller than her, a dwarf to her anger.
He shook his head, his grills glittering in despair, tears scattering about. "What are you doing to me? Who are you?" he asked these hollowly. The ludicrous thought that this girl would end him possessed him. He felt a stringy feeling. It was not a feeling. Something string-like coiled around his air ways. The gun flopped to the floor as he grasped his throat, feeling nothing on the skin of his throat. He animatingly held his throat tighter. His breath was seizing.
Blisters broke and trickled pus down. His shirt sticking from sweat to his body. Soon, it was not only his throat that felt clogged. He felt something watery, strong as a nylon thread, crawling from his legs up.
His body felt sore and heavy as it crawled up and tighten around his body, giving each flesh an excruciating tug. He felt the tug on his bladder and it let go. Looking down, he saw a dark patch appear and spread on his brown slacks. Every part of his body was being squeezed and tugged. Colourless, he crashed down on his knees and gripped his face.
The girl looked down on him. Like his 'chi' she was at this moment as he began screaming in pain. Her face beginning to lift with a sort of anticipation. She watched him as he screamed while her magic squeezed and tugged at every organ, every blood vessels. She was tearing him from the inside out.
Something spread through her. The sensation from hot hands against skin, from seeing your favorite show again on television. It spread through her and she felt like waltzing in the air. If she jumped, the night wings will seize her, carrying her to the clouds and in it's hot sizzling glory, will slowly dance with her. He screamed and by all that lived, it was... She looked up to the sky as a suppressed sound of pleasure threatened to burst out of her mouth. She barely could contain herself.
His screams now were as a little girl in a nightmare, but she knew that the whole forest could still hear it. Smell it. It was what she craved for, for days. What she had been longing for since the day her parents died.
She could barely compose herself. Her soft lips parted and her stomach tighten as a sound rushed from the deepest part of her. Her body tingled as it came forth and when she was about to let it out, he stopped screaming.
She closed her mouth and with hooded eyes watched him slump to the floor, blood streaming through his hollow eyes.
She exhaled, trying to gather strength after such experience. Her inside still lisped in tingles and her body felt hot and jarred. The brown lake dancing, her body tried to calm down from such exhilaration.
A noise was made. Her eyes zeroed in on a shaking bush. That feeling that someone had been watching her washed over her and as she made a move to go towards the bush, a rat ran out, followed closely by another.
She watched them struggled over something before they ran back into the forest. She signed, looking back to the waste. With trembling legs, she made her exit.
****
The tires crunched as they made their way out of the woodshed and while they were on the highway, she asked for his name. "Cobly," he told her.
"Cobly," she tasted the name. "I'm Jovic. Jovic Arcada." She watched him from her rear mirror. Head ducked while absently flicking Sarah hair as she slept soundly
"You are an Arcada? The Jovic Arcada."
She sped on. An unknown time, she turned on the trafficator before turning into the sidewalk, parking the car. "I'm glad you know who I am. So, there will be no need for any introduction the next time we meet."
He exited the car, with Sarah on his arms, thinking he never want to see her again.
But, she did come. Three and half years later. While he was tending to the makeshift garden beside their house that his wife loves, he heard the crunches of gravel and he turned to see her looking at him ghostly.
"You have come."
"Yes."
She moved closer. "Do you still owe me your life?"
Cobly didn't hesitate when he nodded. "What can I do for you? Anything."
"Anything?"
Cobly remembered what she had done for him and Sarah. It was a huge debt that needed to be cleared. And, she looked like she needed the help. Her voice back then held little emotions in it but it seems everything had gone down the drain. There was nothing again in her eyes and he was curious. "Anything."
"Then I will need your life."
He looked at her trying to get the meaning to her statement.
"You agreed. No backing away."
"I know. But what do you mean? Are you in a danger..."
She waved her hand. "Is better for you to see than being told."
With that, she brought out a razor and cut her thumb using the trickling blood to draw a circle round her. While Cobly looked at her as a nurse watches a patient on suicide watch cutting an apple with a knife, she began whispering: "Astute arisam quickim."
Their surrounding rose, tension filled, and he thought he saw a huge hand on her shoulder.
"Eje Igwulube okodu nne mulu m'...ega buru ikem tata, oge adie!"
Cobly bent his head, for how many minutes, he was not aware, but when he came to, he saw her, Miss Jovic, on the ground.
He went up to her and cradled her head in his arms. "Are you ok, Miss Jovic?"
She opened her eyes weakly and seeing his iris, nodded. He carried her into the house and sat her on the kitchen stool, and while he made tea for her, Sarah returned.
Sarah seeing the commotion her husband was making and intrigued at the prospect of them having a visitor asked who she was. None answered– Jovic weak from her fainting spell and Cobly immersed in serving Jovic the perfect tea.
"Who are you? Honey, who is she?" It was like speaking to the dead. Only this dead man was frantically pouring tea into a cup with a childlike expression. And the woman dragged Jovic out of her chair. "Did you seduce my husband."
Jovic too weak to answer tried to return to the chair but Sarah wasn't having it. She pulled Jovic by the hair and soon, she began pulling Jovic's hair, screaming.
"Leave my woman alone!"
They pulled apart. Sarah smiling, pushed Jovic. "You heard right. Now get out of here."
"I said, leave her alone."
Sarah still smiling, watched Cobly bound towards them and before she knew it, or react, he lifted her up by the throat. Her legs failing. She choked his name lovingly over and over. Not much is remained of her. She had been living purely by eating vegetables that she was now bones and puffy air.
Lifted her up in the air, and in anger, smashed her head to the wall. The second blop, blood smeared on the wall and she slacked against his arm, a lone tear falling to his hand. He dropped her to the floor. Opened the door that had been his home throughout his second life and left with a tottering leg Jovic by his side.